Triple-dog dare: Answer these questions about 'A Christmas Story'

When it comes to Christmas movies, nothing touches "A Christmas Story." Not even "Die Hard."

MICHAEL SADOWSKI

When it comes to Christmas movies, nothing touches "A Christmas Story." Not even "Die Hard."

But it's not perfect, and I still have some questions after about a thousand viewings:

Why is Ralphie so scared when Miss Shields is passive-aggressively lambasting him and Schwartz for goading Flick into the tongue-to-the-flagpole thing? Ralphie didn't do squat. He sat there and watched it, which, incidentally, is the same thing every other kid in the class did. I know there's no security-tape footage Miss Shields can check, but he's got the truth on his side — why is he sweating it so much? Piece of advice to all third-graders: When you look guilty, you are guilty. You're welcome. More of Ralphie taking too much blame. In the "fudge" scene, when Ralphie is holding the hubcap with the lug nuts of the wheel, the Old Man is the one who carelessly isn't paying attention and knocks them all over the road. So what does the Old Man do? The lazy-dad thing, immediately looking at Ralphie with the "How can you be so dumb?" look on his face, causing Ralphie to drop an F-bomb and setting in motion a series of events that includes another kid getting knocked around by his mom. C'mon, dads. You're better than that. Why is "A Christmas Story" only aired at Christmas? Haven't we gotten by the stereotype of it being solely a Christmas movie? When you're home on a Saturday night at 10 in the middle of June trolling through the channels and your basic-cable movie choices are "Daredevil" on FX, "Shawshank Redemption" on AMC, the Adam Sandler version of "The Longest Yard" on Spike, you're at least considering checking out "A Christmas Story" on TBS, right? I know the literacy standards were somewhat lax in the workforce in the 1930s — something that has been, for the most part, corrected. But every morning, we see the Old Man reading the paper. It's the sports section, yeah, but he reads it every single solitary morning that we see him. So unless he's faking reading it in some elaborate overcompensation ruse, you can't tell me that he doesn't know how to pronounce "fragile" when he sees it on a large delivery box. Darren McGavin was 61 and looked it when he made this movie as the Old Man. Melinda Dillon as the mother was 44. And they're together? He's 17 years older, he seems like the antithesis of fun, he threatens the use of screwdrivers to make his kids eat, he curses like a sailor, he goes behind your back to buy dangerous Christmas gifts that result in your son nearly going blind, he isn't exactly much to look at and, to top it off, he may or may not be able to read. Back off ladies, he's taken. It's the most impressive bit of largely unnoticed casting in the history of Hollywood. Jean Shepherd's narration is nearly flawless. But how can you weave a tapestry of obscenities that can hang in space over Lake Michigan? Is it like a magic carpet or something? That bugs me every single time I hear it. It's one of those lines that you have no idea what it means, but you laugh at it because it sounds funny. Kinda like every line of "Louie." Do the Parkers live in the most boring neighborhood in America? The Old Man puts up a leg-shaped lamp, and less than two minutes later, everyone for three blocks is outside staring at it, even stopping traffic. Get a life, people of Cleveland Street. While it may be "electric sex gleaming in the window," it's just a lamp. Two things that somewhat ruin the viewing of the movie now for me: 1) The ridiculous way it's been commercialized, enough to merit its own section in many department stores; and 2) the fact that Peter Billingsley, the actor who played Ralphie, is now BFFs with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. Don't ask me why this bugs me; it just does. It makes me feel better that I know useless trivia facts like the name of the secretary at Dewey High School in "Growing Pains" (it's Estelle) when I am informed that apparently everyone other than the Old Man knew the name of the Lone Ranger's nephew's horse. And I just looked it up — Victor is correct. What's carbine action? Is it confined to BB-gun performance? Is it something I should look for in other products? The next time I buy a car, should I ask the salesperson what kind of carbine action the car gets? I just checked, and there is no entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for "Longest time watching 'A Christmas Story.'" Shouldn't there be? If you're in college and you had nothing to do on break, and you actually got through the traditional 24-hour marathon, and you knew the record was, say, 54 hours, wouldn't you pop in the Blu-ray and take a shot at the title? That's a ton of "ands" but I'm surprised no one has thought about trying it. No one other than me.

Michael Sadowski is a Pocono Record writer who actually saw "A Christmas Story" in the theater as an 8-year-old, and the author of PopRox, a pop culture and local entertainment blog at blogs.thepoconos.com/pop-rox. A longer version of this column appears there. Contact him at msadowski@poconorecord.com.

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